No to nuclear war about Syria

This 10 April 2018 video from the USA says about itself:

“A Very Dangerous Moment”: Trump Threatens to Strike Syria as Warmonger John Bolton Joins Cabinet

We speak with Phyllis Bennis, a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, author of several books, including, most recently, “Understanding ISIS and the New Global War on Terror”. Her latest piece for In These Times is headlined “It’s John Bolton’s First Day in the White House. We Must Stop Him from Escalating War in Syria.”

From daily The Morning Star in Britain:

Thursday, April 12, 2018

A US-Russia confrontation in Syrian skies is unlikely to be contained there

THINGS have come to a pretty pass when Turkey poses as the voice of moderation over the conflict in Syria, but Prime Minister Binali Yildirim’s “healing wounds” comments merit attention.

Ankara has itself been no slouch in causing Syria’s wounds, having initially worked with Saudi Arabia and Qatar to arm, train and provide entry into Syria for every jihadist outfit, including Isis and al-Qaida affiliates.

Its obsessive hostility to Kurdish self-determination in Turkey and Syria has served to justify backing Isis when it tried to drive the Kurds from Kobane and sending its own armed forces to occupy the Afrin canton of northern Syria’s Aleppo province.

The regime of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan understands, however, that direct confrontation between the Russian and US air forces in the skies over Syria is unlikely to be contained there.

Moscow’s threat to shoot down missiles directed at targets in Syria and to target the “source of the missiles” could have implications for Turkey, especially its Nato air base at Diyarbakir.

Ankara has distanced itself from the US in recent years — or possibly been distanced by Washington — as its erstwhile friends ignored its pleas not to ally themselves with the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), which not only stood firm against Isis at Kobane but drove the jihadists out of much of northern and eastern Syria.

In response the Erdogan government has rebuilt relations with Russia that were at rock bottom after Turkish fighters shot down a Russian Su-24 warplane over the Syrian-Turkish border area in 2015.

…

Russia has said and done nothing about the Turkish occupation of Afrin and expulsion of the YPG.

More significantly, the same applies to the US, despite its recent close co-operation with the Kurds, using YPG troops as its military cutting edge against Isis in Syria as it did previously in Iraq before remaining silent in the face of Baghdad, first, and then Ankara dislodging its allies.

Donald Trump won the presidency partially through his assurance that his administration would not repeat the blood-soaked overseas adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan. He stated earlier this month that he would soon bring home all US forces in Syria.

This position was put on hold under pressure from the State Department and Pentagon, but it confirms the lack of public support for GIs being sent to war when the US is under no direct security threat.

There is a similar lack of desire for overseas conflicts in France and Britain, which is why recent involvement by the Nato forces has been restricted to aerial bombardment while proxy ground troops risk their lives in combat.

This meets the requirement of both brass hats and the hand-wringing “we have to do something” B-52 liberals whose consciences are always salved by bombing raids, irrespective of civilian “collateral damage”.

Sending warplanes into Syria’s Russia-defended airspace — or firing missiles from outside its borders — will be no picnic.

It won’t assist in investigating the truth behind the poison gas allegations made by the Jaish al-Islam jihadists and lapped up avidly by the Nato powers and mass media.

Nor will it help the long-suffering Syrian people, whose welfare is supposedly paramount for all concerned.

Bombing plans should be halted and full assistance given to prioritising scientific evidence over assertions to expose the reality of what happened in Douma.

With Trump as president, United States economist Jeffrey Sachs ‘fears a nuclear war every day‘.

The Dutch right-wing government, NATO allies of the USA, yesterday said that the allegations of the Trump administration about Douma were ‘probably’ correct (probability is hardly the same thing as certainty). The Dutch government dissociated itself from Trump’s choice of words in his Twitter message to Russia that ‘the missiles are coming’. However, they failed to dissociate themselves from Trump‘s military escalation plans as a whole.

German government supports war preparations against Syria: here.

According to Dutch NOS TV today, Trump is talking to Turkish President Erdogan about Turkish participation in attacking Syria. The Turkish government has re-stated its support for regime change in Syria.

From daily News Line in Britain today:

It is becoming clearer that PM May intends that UK land, air and naval forces will take part in the Franco-American strike against Syria that is now just hours away. She is however so nervous of the prospect, that she is not willing to recall parliament to give MPs a vote on whether the UK should join Trump’s war.

She knows that after the House of Commons voted for war with Iraq in 2003 – a war that was based on lies that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction that it was about to use, a war that destroyed Iraq and ushered in ISIS – the House of Commons will be reluctant to repeat the Iraq, and then the Libyan disasters in Syria.

The US, France, Britain, Saudi Arabia and other American allies internationally continue to threaten military action against the Assad government in Syria: here.